The History of the Republic

[JWagner]

Watching through the movies, I noticed several quotes that leave me in awe. This entire story is based 3,000ish years prior to the movies. However, these quotes make me wonder... "What destroyed the Republic, and what allowed it to be rebuilt?"

 

Maybe we are destined to fall at the hands of Zakuul?

 

This is just a theory/discussion thread. No right/wrong answers, as there is no official canon for this time period currently

 

 

"I will not stand by while I watch this Republic which has stood for a thousand years be split in two"

"There hasn't been a full scale war since the formation of the Republic"

[DarthDymond]

There is no official answer in the new Canon, but SWTOR and Zakuul are both part of the "Legends" continuity, which does answer that question.

 

The Republic was thrown into the Republic Dark Age for the last century of the New Sith Wars - a series of conflicts that raged from around 2,000 years before the movies, when a fallen Jedi declared himself Darth Ruin and founded a new Sith Empire, until 1,000 years before the movies, when the last of the Sith, the Brotherhood of Darkness, were defeated at Ruusan (Darth Bane was the only Sith survivor, and it was then and there that he instituted the Rule of Two that changed the Sith from an empire to "one master, one apprentice").

 

After the defeat of the Brotherhood at the end of the New Sith Wars, the Republic came out of its Dark Age and was reorganized under the Ruusan Reformation - which among other things disbanded its military (hence no more full-scale wars). By the era of the movies, some people mark the Ruusan Reformation as the start of the 'current' Republic (kind of like how France is now in its "Fifth Republic").

Edited December 16, 2015 by DarthDymond

[JWagner]

There is no official answer in the new Canon, but SWTOR and Zakuul are both part of the "Legends" continuity, which does answer that question.

 

The Republic was thrown into the Republic Dark Age for the last century of the New Sith Wars - a series of conflicts that raged from around 2,000 years before the movies, when a fallen Jedi declared himself Darth Ruin and founded a new Sith Empire, until 1,000 years before the movies, when the last of the Sith, the Brotherhood of Darkness, were defeated at Ruusan (Darth Bane was the only Sith survivor, and it was then and there that he instituted the Rule of Two that changed the Sith from an empire to "one master, one apprentice").

 

After the defeat of the Brotherhood at the end of the New Sith Wars, the Republic came out of its Dark Age and was reorganized under the Ruusan Reformation - which among other things disbanded its military (hence no more full-scale wars). By the era of the movies, some people mark the Ruusan Reformation as the start of the 'current' Republic (kind of like how France is now in its "Fifth Republic").

 

More detail than I was expecting!

But if you think about it, those quotes make it seem as though parts of legends were used in the creation of canon. Otherwise, the Republic would have been far longer. Either that, or the Republic is a new little baby

[DarthDymond]

More detail than I was expecting!

But if you think about it, those quotes make it seem as though parts of legends were used in the creation of canon. Otherwise, the Republic would have been far longer. Either that, or the Republic is a new little baby

Those specific EU/Legends examples (the Ruusan Reformation, the Republic Dark Ages, the New Sith Wars, etc.) actually go the other way - they were created after Episode II came out to try to explain / flesh out those lines from the movie-level canon.

 

In the early '90s the Expanded Universe (what's now called the "Legends" continuity) really kicked into gear, and one of the things they latched onto from the Original Trilogy was Obi-Wan's line: "For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic." The authors, and LucasArts, took the line at face value (and very literally) and established in the EU that the Republic was founded 25,000 years before Episode IV. Dark Horse Comics set some of their EU series during those thousands of years (including the first "Knights of the Old Republic" product, which was a comic miniseries in their "Tales of the Jedi" line), and those stories included multiple full-scale wars between the Republic and Sith (The Great Hyperspace War 5,000 years before the movies, The Sith War 4,000 years before the movies, etc).

 

Then almost ten years later, Episode II comes out and George Lucas included his lines about the Republic having "stood for a thousand years" and there never having been a full-scale war, and suddenly the EU authors / LucasArts' continuity team were in a real bind - so they came up with Ruusan Reformation to try to sort out the seemingly contradictory "thousand generations" vs "thousand years" lines, as well as the inconsistency over whether there had been any full-scale wars in the Republic's history.

 

That's not to say that the new Canon doesn't ever borrow from the Legends continuity - they definitely do. Coruscant first appeared and was given its name in the Heir to the Empire novel eight years before it was called that in Episode I; the Nightsisters and their planet Dathomir are part of the Canon Clone Wars series, but both had been part of the EU for over 15 years by then; heck, just a few weeks ago, the Rebels TV show featured the Interdictor cruiser that's been part of the EU for over 20 years.

 

So yeah, the new Canon certainly might end up using a version of Zakuul - and might even tie it in to what happened to the Republic a thousand years before the movies. But one thing to bear in mind is that with the Canon being a separate continuity from SWTOR's Legends universe, it might be a very different version of Zakuul -- to use an example from another Disney property with multiple continuities, the way a concept or even a character exists in one continuity can be very different from the way they showed up in their original form.

Edited December 17, 2015 by DarthDymond